Spot: What Was I Thinking?
by AlexisVeronica
Summary: Spot gets into a whole slew of trouble by making a few fatal decisions one night. Fate just doesn't seem to be on his side.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing that you recognize.

Chapter one

"Aw, why don't ya stay for anodder game Spot?" A short dark haired boy of 16 looked over to me. His eyes were telling me to stay, but only because he didn't want me to leave till he had taken all of my money.

I shook my head. "No way Race. I don't wanna loose all me money. I gotta have some left ova so that I can sell tomorrow." Though I'm pretty good at poker, I am in no way as good as Racetrack. He must have learned how to play in his mother's womb, because he wins 99 percent of the time. And he never cheats. We have all tried to catch him multiple times, but he just doesn't cheat, so there's nothing to catch.

A tall brown haired boy, who was wearing a red bandana and a cowboy hat, stood up and nodded. "Yeah Race, he's gotta have somethin' left. He's lucky he don live witcha." Jack Kelly cracked a smile towards both me and Race. The three of us are some of the oldest newsies in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and we've been best friends for almost as long. We've seen each other through thick and thin, hard times and high times.

"Well, fellas, I gotta get goin'. I'll see ya two later though," I said, after shrugging on my worn coat. Rubbing my hands to get them warm, I started for the door. Race and Jack both shook my hands and the other boys waved and yelled their good-byes from their bunks or wherever they were in the Manhattan Newsies bunkroom. Kloppman bid me good night as I walked down the stairs and towards the door.

"Careful out there tonight Spot, it's cold out," he told me. Mr. Kloppman has always looked out for all the boys, even the ones that didn't live in his boarding house. He even looked out for the girls who were newsies, but there are less of them than there are of us.

"No problem Kloppy. Thanks for da concern. Have a good night." I waved to him and pushed the door open. Unfortunately, Kloppman was right. It was freezing out. It just seemed a little too cold for the middle of October, but I had to get going, so I started towards home with a brisk walk.

-----Needless to say, about 15 minutes outside and my fingers had turned to icicles.

"Shit, shit, it's cold out here," I whispered to myself, periodically blowing on my fingers to keep them warm. If it hadn't have been so late, I would have stopped to buy a coffee or hot chocolate or something to keep my hands warm, but everything had been closed for quite some time now. "Just another half hour, forty five minutes tops, Spot. You can do dis."

As I was chanting this mantra, I heard a noise coming from a building that I had just passed. Now, New York City is full of noises, even at one in the morning, but crashing noises like this are hard to come by. So are stifled screams and baby cries. I paused, looking back at the building. The door to the small store was open. Looking around, I probably made the stupidest decision of my life. I slowly walked towards the store and stepped inside.

"Hello?" I whispered. "Anyone here?" Looking around, I noticed that the small store was trashed. It was a bookstore, and books were everywhere. They were lying on the floor, on the counters, most of them in ruins. I bent over and picked one up. Turning it over, I read the title. Utopia.

Standing up, I pulled my cane out and held it in front of me. My slingshot was in my other hand, ready for use. Creeping towards the staircase, I tried to make as little noise as possible. The owners of the shop lived above it in the small apartment, and I was hesitant to climb the stairs… But I did anyway.

The next thing I know, I'm face to face with a burglar himself. He was surprised, because he yelled at me.

"What the hell you doin here kid?"

Not answering him, I swung my cane at his legs, making him buckle to the ground. "What did you do?" I screamed at him. The robber took a few seconds to realize what had happened, but when he did, a few things happened within a very short time frame. He got up and looked at me, angry.

"Get out of my way kid!" he yelled, pushing me down the stairs and following me. He ran out the door before I had a chance to regain my bearings.

I lay there on the ground for a moment before getting up and going back up the stairs. The fall had hurt, but my adrenaline was pumping so much that I wouldn't feel it until the next morning.

The apartment upstairs was small. I'm sure that it had once been nice and homey, and kept tidy, but the place was now a mess after having been ransacked by that guy. I walked from the living room to the bedroom and what I found was a surprise even to me. The wife and husband lay on the floor. The man was bleeding, but dead, obviously from a gunshot wound. His wife lay at his side, straggled and suffocated. A crib had been overturned and a stuffed animal lay on the floor, crushed beneath the crib.

The next sight was the one that I would have rather not seen. Pulling at the stuffed animal, trying to get it out from under the crib, was a baby. A very small baby, no older than one year.

"Fuck." I did what anyone else in my position would have done. I debated in my mind. "Spot Conlon, just leave. The bulls are gonna come and they are gonna blame you for all dis. But you can't just leave the kid here. It'll nevah survive by itself." I argued like this for at least two minutes before I did the unthinkable.

I picked up the kid and ran down the stairs, out through the door, and down the street.

-----The baby was crying, so I let it hold my slingshot to make it shut up. The kid instantly clamed up, but that was only because it had stuck the handle of the slingshot in its mouth. "Shit, I can't just let you freeze." I took off my coat, another stupid decision, and wrapped the baby up, trying to keep it warm. I next did the only thing I could think of, which was to run all the way back to the Manhattan Lodging House with the baby in my arms.

When I got there, my lungs hurt from the cold air, but I bounded up the front stairs and began to pound on the door. I heard commotion inside, as well as footsteps towards the door.

"Who is it?" Kloppman asked, before he opened the door.

"Kloppy, it's Spot. I gotta huge problem and I need your help."

Mr. Kloppman opened the door and gasped at what he saw in my arms. "Come in boy, come in. What happened?"

I just shook my head back and forth, back and forth. "I don' know Kloppman. I just made some of the dumbest decisions of my life tonight." I recounted my story to the old man as he made the baby some warm milk. By this time, Jack, Race and the other boys were up now, and they were listening intently as well.

"And that's when I saw the kid. I couldn't just leave it there, so I picked it up an' ran. I don' know why. I don' even know how to take care of a baby."

Kloppman was holding the baby, giving it the milk by dipping a clean piece of cloth into the milk and letting the baby suck on that. He looked at me. "You did what you thought was right Spot. But now you need to think about what you are going to do with this little one. Are you going to give it to the orphanage or to the nuns at the church?"

I sat in silence for a while, mulling the options over in my head. What could I do? Why had I truly picked the child up in the first place? Why not just let the cops find it in the morning? "No. I won't give this poor baby away. It needs a parent, not someone who will lose it in the shuffle and bustle of a convent or orphanage. I am going to keep it." I took the baby, who I had realized by this time was a girl, and held her in my arms. I looked up at the boys. They were stunned at what I had just said.

"Spot, man, do you tink dats such a good idea? I mean, youse don' even know the foist thing about takin' care of a child," Jack said, looking me straight in the eyes.

I glanced down at the baby's face. Her eyes were closed and her thumb was in her mouth.

"Jack, I don' care what happens to me. As long as dis child is living, I will be its parent. I won't give it up, not like what happened to me. I just can't do dat. Despite what some say, I don't got a heart made a stone."

Race stepped up beside Jack, looking skeptical. "Well, Spot, you want to keep her, so keep her. But a baby is a lot of woik, ya know. It ain't all sunshine and roses. It's a lotta long nights and even longer days. Sides, where you gonna keep her when youse gotta sell?"

"I don't know fellas, but I know dat I'll tink of something. Anyways, I tink dat I'm gonna name her Hannah. Hannah Conlon."


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I still own nothing that you recognize. Thanks for the reviews everyone!!

"Kit, would ya please jus' take 'er so I can go sell? I'll even pay youse an' everythin'!" I was pleading with one of my newsies to watch Hannah so that I could go and sell. For the past few days I had tried to take her with me. Even though she was great for business, (a little baby brings in all the female customers… "Oh, how cute!" "Is she yours?" "What's her name?") it was too hard to keep her with me. I had learned that babies need to be fed a lot more than adults do, and that they cried too much. And that I couldn't change her diaper in private, much less in a public area. So that's how I ended up on Thursday morning pleading with Kit to watch her.

Kit looked up at me. Her brown eyes were skeptical, and she had her hands on her hips. She was one of my most loyal newsies, and she had been around for a while. She was educated too, not like most of the others. I think this is why she seemed so skeptical of my plan.

"So you're saying that if I watch Hannah you'll pay me? How much are you going to pay?"

I thought for a moment. If I paid her for the amount of newspapers that she usually sells per day, than she should be fine with it. I answered her. "I'll give ya fifty cents. You usually sell fifty papers a day, so I'll give ya fifty. You're actually gainin' money if ya think about it, seein' as how you're not giving money to get da papes."

I could see Kit's mind moving a mile a minute, but she finally opened her mouth to answer. "Alright, it's a deal. Fifty cents a day, but I want Saturdays off. Can you handle her by yourself on Saturdays?"

"Of course Kit, anythin' for youse. I swear, you just saved me life," I said, smiling the biggest smile that anyone ever saw. I handed Hannah off to her and told her everything that I knew that Hannah liked. I also included a new stuffed animal that I had bought for the baby the day after I got her. All I know is that the toy made her happy, so I bought it for her, because she made me happy. It's a vicious cycle.

Hannah burbled, Kit giggled, and I literally ran for the door. Once outside, I took a deep breath of fresh air and sighed. "Peace at last." No sleep was finally catching up to me. The first few nights with Hannah were like a novelty; she was cute, I would watch her sleep and feed her when she woke up. As the days wore on, however, I started to fall asleep while watching her sleep. Then I would have to wake up when she did and feed her, or change her, or whatever else she needed at the time.

-----I had been thinking about this so much that I startled myself by realizing that I was standing in the distribution line already.

The man behind the counter was his pissed off usual self. "What the hell you waiting for kid?" he asked.

"Uh, 150 papers. Please," I said, getting 20 more than I usually did. Now that I was paying Kit and paying for everything for Hannah, I needed to make more money. As I walked away from the window, the growing need for money consumed my mind. "I tink dat I might need to get anodder job. Maybe in a factory or somethin'. Oh well, jus' somethin' else to tink abouth and worry about."

-----Later that afternoon after I had sold my last paper, I heard someone calling out my name.

"Spot! Hey Spot! I'se been lookin' everywhere for ya. Hannah's cryin' like mad an' she won' stop," the little boy said, panting from his long run. It was one of my little newsies, Hawkeye. He was training to become one of my 'birds.' They were some of my most trusted and loyal newsies, and they basically spied for me. Let me know what was going on in the other parts of New York, especially Queens, whose leader I've had to keep my eye on for the past two years, ever since he came into power.

"Well, why's she cryin' so much? Did Kit change her an' feed her?" I asked.

"Spot, I don' know. Kit just told me to go an' get youse, so I did," Hawk responded.

"Alright. Thanks kid." I toss Hawkeye a nickel and high tail it back to the Lodging House. Once I got within a couple hundred feet, I could hear Hannah yelling at the top of her lungs. I paused for a moment to look up at the sky. "If dere is a god up dere, please, have moicy on me. Please," I murmured as I ran inside.

I found Kit in the kitchen, freaking out and having a mental breakdown.

"Spot. I swear. I don't know what happened or what's wrong with this little girl, but she just won't stop crying. I think that I'm on the verge of crying myself," she told me, and I could see that she was.

"Calm down Kit, I'll take ova from here," I told her, pulling out fifty cents and handing it over to her. Her big brown eyes glistened as she took the money wordlessly and ran out of the room.

With Hannah crying in my arms, I stood for a minute of two, looking at her. According to Kit, who I asked after she had calmed down, Hannah had eaten and been fine up until about two hours ago. Her diaper was changed a few times and she had been played with and taken a nap. I looked at the baby again.

"Are you okay baby? You don' sound good," I whispered. And that's when I noticed that she didn't look good. The poor child looked like she was in pain.

"Kit." I started to feel panicked, because if Hannah was sick, the only thing I could do was take her to a doctor… A doctor which I didn't have the money for. Yelling for Kit, I started to gather up Hannah's things. "Kit. Kit! Come here! Now!"

Kit came running into the kitchen and accidentally stubbed her toe on one of the kitchen chairs. "Shit, ow, what Spot?"

"I need you and Sparrow ta watch da boarding house tonight. I gotta take Hannah to a doctor or somethin'. I'll be back as soons as I can."

Kit nodded. "Sure thing Spot. Good luck."

I nodded back to her and ran out the door, a screaming Hannah still in my arms.

-----I had to ask around for a little bit, but I finally got some answers as to where I could take Hannah for as little money as possible and still get good service. I finally found a Doctor Goodman that would see me right away.

The doctor took us in and the first thing he said was, "Well, this is most unusual. It isn't everyday that you see a young boy come in with a baby. Is she your little sister?"

I shook my head. "No, no sir, she's my daughter. An' she's very sick… Or at least, she seems like it. It seems like she's in a lotta pain."

Doctor Goodman's eyes widened at my daughter comment, but he took Hannah out of my arms and gave her a good look over. "Well, she does look like she is in a good amount of pain. Let's give her a check up." He laid her on a table and felt her stomach with his hands and listened through his stethoscope to her heartbeat. "How long has she been crying?" he asked.

I shook my head. "I'm not sure… I was out woikin' when she started."

The doctor nodded and proceeded to take her temperature. He turned to look at me when he was done. "It seems that your daughter has quite a high fever. Now, it also looks like she has developed strep throat, which is a virus that makes your throat itch and hurt. If not treated, it can turn to something much worse, but I am going to give you medicine for it. She should be better in a few days."

I sighed, relieved. "Sir thanks so much, but I got no way of payin' you," I told him.

Doctor Goodman just laughed. "I understand. You seem like a hard working young man. Tell you what. If you come here three times a week and help me out with whatever needs to be done, then I will consider us even. And if I think you are doing good work, then I might offer you a job here."

I just smiled, Hannah in my arms. "Thanks so much doctor."

"It's not a problem. Come back tomorrow and bring Hannah. I want to see how she is doing."


End file.
